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Lawsuit: Man’s Body Donated To Research Against Wishes

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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A man has filed a lawsuit against Albert Einstein Medical Center alleging that his father’s body was shipped out to be used for medical research against the family’s wishes.

When 71-year-old Elmer Wiley died at Einstein of a heart attack, his son was totally devastated.

“He was my dad and I loved him,” said Douchan Wiley.

His father’s death was hard enough to cope with, but what Wiley said happened after his death made it even harder.

“I left him in your care and you just treated him like a piece of meat,” said Wiley.

Wiley says five days after his father’s death, he learned Einstein sent his father’s body to Temple University’s School of Medicine. He said his father’s body was finally released to the family after two days of calling around.

“He had incisions like they were doing his brain. They tried to cover up the best that they could,” explained Wiley. “You could tell that they already worked on him at the medical school.”

Wiley says a social worker at Einstein told him that his father’s body had been sent to the medical school because it had been abandoned.

However, Wiley’s lawyer contends his client visited his father every day in the hospital and hospital records with his client’s contact information on them is proof.

“They knew on a daily basis that Douchan was there. So to say that he was abandoned is ludicrous,” said attorney John Benson.

Calls to Albert Einstein Medical Center were not returned. Temple University’s School of Medicine declined comment.